Paying Bloggers

The US Judge in the Oracle-Google case has alighted on a potential can of worms by ordering the parties to divulge the names of news-sites and bloggers to whom they’d paid money.

If Oracle pointed to two commenters it had paid – an IP lawyer and an academic. Google has yet to reply and has been given until today to do so.

All that Google would say was that it does have ‘financial connections’ to commenters but that it would be “extraordinarily difficult and perhaps impossible” to identify them. Why? One wonders. Can there be so many of them? If there are hundreds of them that would be a real scandal.

If the practice of obliging companies to disclose financial connections to commenters on news-sites and blogs were to be widened to include all companies which have extensive coverage on the Web, the results could be interesting.

Particularly for those companies which get consistently supportive coverage on the Web.

One wonders, just for arguments sake of course, if, say, Intel pays news-sites and bloggers for coverage.

No wonder the testosterone runs high in Silicon Valley – just look at the pay.…more »

10 Comments

David Manners

August 26, 2012 07:49

Yes, NakTT, I rather gathered from your first remark that you knew just as well as I did. Naughty old Intel.

NakTT

August 26, 2012 06:52

@David
I know they are. Just being polite

Scunnerous

August 25, 2012 01:12

For many of the sites which review hardware, it depends on what you mean by “paid”. All Intel has to do is throw them the odd bone, in the form of an unlocked sample CPU and motherboard and they fall over themselves with adulation.

dick.selwood

August 24, 2012 13:03

But, unlike the policeman, there is no one slipping me my winnings for writing about them
d

They are two different situations, Mike. Google provides an infrastructure for bloggers and takes a share of their revenue. Intel pays commenters on news-sites, blogs etc which could possibly, purely speculation of course, affect the views expressed.

Mike Bryant

August 24, 2012 08:42

Almost every blogger in the world, though not HMPress of course, is paid by Google through its ad linking scheme. I’ve even had a few dollars from them over the years.
But nothing from Intel. I must demand a raise !

For many of the sites which review hardware, it depends on what you mean by "paid". All Intel has to do is throw them the odd bone, in the form of an unlocked sample CPU and motherboard and they fall over themselves with adulation.